Social Networks as Foreign Policy

By NOAH SHACHTMAN

Published: December 13, 2009

In August, after the suppression of Iran's pro-democracy protests, officials in Tehran accused Western governments of using online social networks like Twitter and Facebook to help execute a ''soft coup.'' The accusation wasn't entirely off-base. In Iran and elsewhere, this year showed the growing importance of social networks to U.S. foreign policy.

Long before the protests in Iran started, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees U.S. civilian international broadcasting, had in place software to counter censorship in countries like Iran, so people could better access the blogosphere. And the State Department financially supports agencies that make it easier for Iranians and others to surf the Web. After the protests began, the State Department asked Twitter to reschedule a maintenance outage so the activists could continue to spread the word about their movement.

The United States has long disseminated information to people living under repressive regimes -- think of Radio Free Europe. The difference here is that the content of the information isn't the important thing; the emphasis is on supporting the technical infrastructure and then letting the people decide for themselves what to say. Communication itself erodes despots' authority. ''The very existence of social networks is a net good,'' says Alec Ross, a senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Outside of Iran, the State Department recently underwrote the establishment of Pakistan's first mobile-phone-based social network, Humari Awaz (''Our Voice''). More than eight million text messages were sent over it in a little over two weeks. And Ross recently traveled to Mexico with the Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey and other technology executives to help build an electronic system for anonymously reporting drug crimes, which they say they hope will undermine narcotics kingpins.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has written about the efficacy of samizdat in undermining the Soviet Union, sees a similar dynamic at work here. ''The freedom of communication and the nature of it,'' he has said, ''is a huge strategic asset for the United States.''